Use of Drags in Psychiatry & Clinical Handbook of Psychotropic Drugs

Use of Drags in Psychiatry: A Handbook

Emmanual Persad and Vivian Rakoff

Hans Huber Publishers, 157 pp., 1987

Clinical Handbook of Psychotropic Drugs, 3rd Edition

Kalyna Z. Bezchlibnyk-Butler and J. Joel Jeffries

Toronto ON: Hogrefe and Huber Publishers, 83 pp., 1992

These books are from the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry and the University of Toronto and both are very practical and excellent guides to the safe and intelligent use of psychotropic drugs.

The first book is aimed at the use of drugs and covers all the various classes including the long acting neuroleptics. It also has a chapter on diagnosis and management of neuroleptic-induced movement disorders.

Each chapter has a different author but a general format is followed giving indications, contraindications, dosage forms, major side effects and many practical suggestions for drug usage.

There are chapters on ECT, the pharmacological treatment of offensive behavior, the sodium amytal interview and a very informative chapter on questions patients ask about psychiatric medications.

Each chapter ends with suggested readings which are well chosen and in line with the purpose of the book which, as the editors point out, is a handbook useful for daily reference and an up-to-date guide to empirical drug treatment in psychiatry. The editors refer to the delay between writing and publication. It is hoped that another edition will emerge soon which will include some of the more recent additions to drug treatment in psychiatry, noteably risperidone, moclobemide, fluoxetine and fluvoxamine.

The second book is in a larger format measuring 11″ by 9″ with a spiral binding that makes it possible to lay the large pages open.

This book also covers all the psychotropic drugs. The format includes many tables and charts which make it very easy to use as a reference, particularly for making comparisons and indications for drugs of any particular class. It includes the more recent antidepressants.

The editors describe this book as user friendly and I found it lived up to this description. It was very easy to look up very specific detailed points and find the answer very rapidly in the text or in one of the tables.

These are two good basic pratical books on psychotropic drugs. I recommend both books for medical students, mental health workers, pharmacists, family physicians and general psychiatrists who wish to keep abreast of the intelligent and safe use of psychotropic drugs.